News

Electricity generation from existing coal-fired power plants will increase from 2012 levels through 2025, according to the Reference case presented in the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Annual Energy Outlook 2015, released on April 14. In addition to the Reference case, five alternative cases—Low and High Economic Growth cases, Low and High Oil Price cases, and […]

 While fuel switching may be the easiest option for hitting the 2020 and 2030 goals set by the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) proposed Clean Power Plan, it may impede reaching longer-term climate targets said experts at an April 8 symposium hosted by the Central Texas Association for Energy Economics and the Energy Institute at the […]

Workers at San Diego’s General Atomics (GA) on April 10 began the years-long process of winding the 1000-ton superconducting electromagnet that will power the ITER fusion reactor under construction in Southern France. The $16 billion ITER project, a consortium of the U.S., the European Union, Russia, China, Japan, and other nations, aims to test reactor-scale […]

Danish firm DONG Energy will take over RES Americas’ rights to develop more than 1 GW of new offshore wind capacity off the coast of Massachusetts.  RES secured the rights to develop one of two leases that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) awarded at its Jan. 29 offshore wind auction. Following approval from […]

Staff at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) should expeditiously complete and implement cybersecurity rulemaking for nuclear fuel-cycle facilities, the regulatory agency’s commissioners have ordered.  In a March 24 agency memorandum to Mark Satorius, NRC executive director for operations, the commission disapproved the one option, which was the staff’s recommendation, to issue a security order to […]

As it decided in a February case involving American Electric Power (AEP), the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) has denied Duke Energy Ohio’s request to charge ratepayers for power from two aging coal plants owned by the Ohio Valley Electric Corp. (OVEC).  In an April 2 order, the state regulator approved the Duke Energy […]

A Gallup poll completed last month found that only 32% of adults in the U.S. worry a “great deal” about global warming or climate change, while 45% worry “only a little” or “not at all.” The survey was taken via telephone interviews conducted during the first week of March using a random sample of 1,025 […]

More trouble has been reported at one of the four European Pressurized Water Reactor (EPR) units currently under construction. AREVA announced on April 7 that chemical and mechanical testing conducted on a reactor vessel head and bottom similar to that of the Flamanville EPR (a 1,630-MW unit under construction on the west coast of the […]

A dip in voltage prompted temporary power cuts to the White House, Capitol Hill, the State Department, and other parts of Washington, D.C., on Tuesday afternoon.  D.C. utility PEPCO said in a statement that the disturbance that affected about 8,000 customers and left a wide swath  of the nation’s capital in the dark was caused […]

Renewable energy development company SunEdison announced on Mar. 25 that it had agreed to purchase up to 1,000 vanadium redox flow batteries totaling more than 100 MW of storage capacity from Imergy Power Systems to be used for community minigrid projects in India. SunEdison, which has an equity stake in Imergy, in January received financing […]

The U.S. will seek to cut its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 26% to 28% from 2005 levels by 2025, the White House said on March 31 in a target submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).  The submission—otherwise referred to as an Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC)—is a formal statement […]

Copenhagen could inaugurate, as early as 2017, a new combined heat and power plant that features a roof-wide artificial ski slope open to the public and blasts smoke rings through a 124-meter chimney.  The $611 million Amager Bakke plant is owned by five Danish municipalities and is being built by the Copenhagen-based waste management company Amager […]

$1.9B Pan-African Renewable Energy Platform Launched. Renewables company Mainstream Renewable Power and private equity firm Actis on Feb. 17 launched a pan-African renewable energy platform dubbed Lekela Power, with ambitions to provide between 700 MW and 900 MW of wind and solar power across Africa by 2018. Mainstream will take responsibility for the full end-to-end […]

The balance in the Zion Nuclear Power Plant decommissioning trust fund was about 30% lower at the end of 2014 than it was the previous year according to a report filed by ZionSolutions with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on March 30. The Report on Status of Decommissioning Funding for Shutdown Reactors—due annually—indicated that there was […]

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) gave its approval to two deals that will see shifts in electricity markets in Hawaii and the Midwest. On Mar. 27, FERC approved Duke Energy’s proposed sale of its merchant generation business to Dynegy for $2.8 billion. The deal, announced last August, covers 11 power plants in the Midwest […]

Plant officials from the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA’s) Watts Bar nuclear facility said during a senior management meeting presentation that Unit 2—currently under construction—is expected to reach commercial operations on Dec. 13, 2015. Assuming it does, the unit will be the first nuclear reactor added to the U.S. fleet since Watts Bar Unit 1 was […]

The U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of the Interior, and the U.S. Department of the Army for Civil Works announced on March 24 that the three agencies would continue to collaborate on hydropower development for at least another five years. The agreement extends a memorandum of understanding (MOU) the three agencies originally signed in […]

Adds Moniz’s March 25 comments on the future of the nation’s nuclear waste beyond Yucca Mountain. As four bipartisan U.S. senators unveiled a bill that tasks a new independent agency with permanent disposal of the nation’s spent nuclear fuel, Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Ernest Moniz on Tuesday outlined steps the agency would take to […]

Numerous announcements of plant closures during the past week are painting a grim picture for the future of the coal industry. On March 20, several news outlets reported that American Electric Power (AEP) had sent Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, or WARN, notices to workers at half a dozen coal-fired plants. Employees at the […]

The ongoing record drought in California has caused significant changes in the state’s power mix as water available for hydroelectric generation becomes increasingly scarce, according to a recent report from Oakland-based nonprofit the Pacific Institute. The California Independent System Operator warned last year that water shortages were likely to substantially impact the state’s generation, with […]

Four Japanese utilities last week announced that they would retire five older reactors rather than implement strict and expensive safety requirements mandated by new nuclear regulations.  Kansai Electric Power Co. on March 17 said it will close two reactors (340 MW and 500 MW) at its Mihama nuclear plant in Fukui Prefecture. On the same […]

Several gigawatts of solar energy faded from European grids during the two-hour solar eclipse that shadowed the continent, as well as parts of Northern Africa and Asia, on Friday morning. But according to the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E)—an organization representing 41 transmission system operators (TSOs) from 34 European countries—grid operators […]

The consortium behind the Nordlink high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) link between Germany and Norway on Mar. 19 awarded the construction contract for the project to Swiss firm ABB. The $2 billion, 525-kV transmission line will be, at 623 kilometers (km), the longest HVDC connection in Europe. It will transit the North Sea across the Skagerrak strait, […]

Cyberattacks on Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power’s (KHNP’s) computer systems last December were committed by a group of North Korean hackers, an interim South Korean investigation has concluded.  The Seoul central prosecutors office said in a March 16 statement that the malicious codes used for the nuclear operator hacking were “the same in composition and […]

Global emissions of carbon dioxide from the energy sector were unchanged from the preceding year—marking the first time in 40 years in which there was a halt or reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases that was not associated to an economic downturn, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said.  The Paris-based autonomous organization said in a […]

The reliability support service agreement (RSSA) that would rescue the R.E. Ginna Nuclear Power Plant in western New York from an early retirement has come under fire from a group of about 60 large electricity customers—industrial, institutional, and commercial entities—who on Mar. 6 asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to reject the proposed deal, […]

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Clean Power Plan will certainly be challenged in court, but states and power companies must expend enormous resources developing and complying with state plans regardless of the outcome, witnesses testified on March 17 at a House hearing on the proposal’s legal and cost issues.  The three-hour-long hearing at the House […]

The Egypt Economic Development Conference (EEDC) in Sharm El-Sheikh resulted in some big agreements for the Egyptian government including a reported $10.5 billion deal with Siemens and a $1.7 billion order with GE. The conference was held March 13–15, 2015, and was purported to be a key milestone of the government’s medium term economic development […]

Delays and other contested costs are expected to push the price for two new units being constructed at the V.C. Summer Nuclear Generating Station up by $980 million, a petition freshly filed by South Carolina Electric & Gas Co. (SCE&G) with the Public Service Commission of South Carolina (SCPSC) shows. SCE&G made the filing to […]